Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Kent was a small town in Putnam County, sixty-seven miles north of New York City, near the Connecticut state line. The population was 3,700.

The town hadn't changed much since the day it was incorporated in 1798. It was too far from New York or Albany or Hartford for commuters, though a few people drove to and from Poughkeepsie for work at Vassar. The residents mostly made their money from farming and tourism and the staples of small-town economics: insurance, real estate and building trades.

Travel books about the area generally didn't mention Kent. The MobilGuide gave the restaurant in the Travel-lodge near the Interstate a couple of stars. The Farming Museum got mentioned. So did a spring flower festival. It was a quiet place.

Outside of the small downtown, about a mile from the last of the seven Protestant churches in Kent, was an old rock quarry. The huge pit did double duty: a Saturday night hangout for teenage boys who had either dates or six-packs of Bud, and an informal shooting range during the day. This afternoon, three men stood at a disintegrating wooden board that served as a table for bench-resting rifles and for holding ammo and targets and extra magazines.

All three were in the NRA-accepted standing firing position-right foot back, parallel to the target, left forward and pointed downrange. They were tall men with shortcut hair sprayed into place. Two of the men had graying hair and were thin. The other, a younger man with black hair, had a beer belly, though his legs were thin and his shoulders broad. They all wore light-colored shoes, light slacks (two pink and one gray) and short-sleeved dress shirts with ties kept in place with a tack or bar. In the shirt pocket of the fatter man was a plastic pen-and-pencil caddy.

They all wore teardrop-shaped shooting sunglasses tinted yellow and made out of impact-resistant glass. In their ears were flesh-colored earplugs.

One thin man and the fat man held Kalashnikov assault rifles, whose clips they had just finished emptying at paper targets 150 feet away. They rested the guns on the ground, muzzles up, and began picking up the empty brass cartridges, which they would reload themselves on the weekend.

The third man held a square, ungainly Israeli Uzi, which he fired in two-second bursts. The muzzle ended in a ten-inch sound suppressor, and the gun made a sound like a hushed chain saw.

All three guns were fully automatic and therefore in violation of federal and state law. The suppressor was a separate offense. None of the men, however, had ever even seen an agent from the FBI or BATF in this part of the county and they weren't any more secretive with these guns than they were with their favorite. 30-06 deer rifle or Remington side-by-side.

The man with the Uzi aimed carefully and emptied the clip.

He took his earplug out and said, "Cease fire," although the others had already laid the guns on the bench, muzzles downrange. There were just the three of them present but they'd been raised in the protocol of firearms and adhered to formalities like this-the same as when they'd arrived, an hour before, and this man had glanced at the others and said, "Ready on the left, ready on the right, ready on the firing line… commence fire."

These were rituals they respected and enjoyed.

He set down the Uzi and went downrange to pick up targets. When he walked back to the shooting stations they picked up their guns, pulled out the clips, opened the bolts, put the safeties on and started toward the parking lot. The guns disappeared into the trunk of a Cadillac

El Dorado.

The ride took only ten minutes. The car pulled into the black gravel driveway of a white colonial, which had been built with money from the man's insurance business. The three men walked around a fieldstone path to the entrance of a den. Inside the large room, decorated with dark green carpeting and wormwood walls, they rolled a gray tarpaulin out on the floor and laid the guns on the thick canvas. Battered metal cleaning kits appeared and the sweet smell of solvent filled the room.

In thirty seconds the guns were stripped down into their component parts and the three men were swabbing the bores with patches threaded through eyelets in the tips of aluminum rods. They lovingly cleaned their weapons.

One of the thin men, John, looked at his watch and walked to the desk-this was his house-and sat down. In seven seconds the phone rang and he answered. He hung up and returned to the blanket. He began to rub oil on the sling of his Kalashnikov.

"Gabriel?" asked Harris, the dark-haired man, the fatter one.

John nodded.

"Has he figured out what happened?"

"Yes, he has," John said.

The third man, William, said, "Who climbed on our bandwagon?"

"It seems there was a man who wanted that girl killed, the one in those filthy movies. He planted the second bomb. He was killed by the police."

"The press thinks he was behind all the bombings?" William asked.

"It seems so. To cover up what he did."

"Media," said Harris. "Blessing and a curse."

John finished assembling the Kalashnikov, closed the bolt, put the safety on and stacked the gun on a rosewood rack next to a Thompson submachine gun, a Remington pump shotgun, an Enfield. 303, an M1 carbine and a. 30-06 bolt-action. "What do you two think?"

Harris said, "All Gabriel's work is wasted if they think someone else did the bombings… You know, though, itis a good smoke screen. There's no pressure on him now. It's a good thing we picked up the count with the passage about the third angel, after the second bomb."

William used a tiny periscope to study the bore of his gun, looking for any bits of gunpowder he'd missed. "We can't just stop. Brother Harris is right."

"No. We can't just stop," John said slowly. He poured water into a Mr. Coffee and began to brew a pot of decaf. Like the others here he felt caffeine was a sinful stimulant. "But I'm not sure I agree about Gabe. The police aren't going to ignore the other bombings. The experts will finish their reports, and they'll find out that someone else was behind them."

Harris said, "Gabriel will stay to see things through. He won't hesitate to sacrifice himself."

John said, "But he shouldn't. He's too valuable."

"Then let's give up on New York," William said. "Send him to Los Angeles. Hollywood. I've said all along we should have begun there. Nobody knows Gabriel in California. All his connections are in Manhattan."

"With all respect," John said, "I think we've got to finish what we started." He spoke softly, as if it pained him to disagree.

John's aura of gentleness was misleading. Harris and William hunted for deer and geese with that excited, hungry love of the hunt. John did not. John had been a marine in Nam and had never once spoken about his tours of duty. Harris and William knew that the ones who didn't talk about killing were the ones who had the most personal relations with it.

John said, "We can't leave New York yet." He shrugged. "That's how I feel."

William hawked and spit into a linen handkerchief. "All right. How does Gabriel feel?"

Harris snapped home the bolt of his machine gun. "He'll do whatever we want him to."

"But he should act fast."

John poured coffee into mugs and handed them to William and Harris. "Oh, he will."

William nodded, then said, "What's the target going to be?"

John's eyes flickered to an illuminated crucifix above his desk, then he looked at the other men.

"I sometimes feel great temerity at times like this," Harris said. "Deciding who should live, who should die."

"He told me about someone, Gabriel did. I think it's an interesting idea."

"Let's go with his thoughts then," Harris said, nodding.

"Agreed."

"Let's pray for his successful mission."

Their eyes closed tightly as they dropped to their knees and the three men that made up the council of elders of the New Putnam Pentecostal Church of Christ Revealed, known-though only to themselves-as the Sword of Jesus, prayed. And they prayed so fervently, their grim lips moved with silent words and tears came into their eyes.

Ten minutes later they rose from the floor, feeling refreshed and cleansed, and John placed a call to Gabriel, waiting for their message in the terrible city of Sodom.

Sam Healy didn't sound quite right.

Rune wasn't sure what it was. Maybe he was standing next to a five-pound wad of C-4 or a land mine.

"So. What's it going to be? Sunshine and sand? Mountains? I need fresh air and wildlife, skunks and badgers, even worms and snakes. Where're we going?"

The rush-hour traffic sped past the phone booth. It was eight a.m.

"Uh, Rune…"

Oh, boy. Do I knowthat tone.

"Something's sort of come up."

Sort of, yeah.

"What? You on an assignment?"

Silence.

Healy said, "I want to be honest with you…"

Oh, shit. She hated that word: Honest. It was like Sitdown, dear. Right up there withThere's something we have to talk about.

"Cheryl called," Healy said.

Hey, not the end of the world.

Not so far.

"Is Adam okay? Is anything wrong?"

"No. Everything's fine."

Another pause.

"She wanted to see me. To talk about.. our situation.

He's told her about me? A warm burst of pleasure in her stomach. Rune asked, "Our…" "I mean, Cheryl and me," Healy said. "Oh." Thatour.

"I know we made plans but I thought I ought to… I wanted to be up-front with you."

"Hey, not a problem," Rune said cheerfully. I'm not going to ask. No way in the world am I going to ask… Where they go, what they do, that's their business. I will not ash. Rune asked, "Is she going to spend the night?" Oh, shit, no, no, no… "I'm sorry, it's none of my business."

"No, she isn't. We're not even going to have lunch or anything." He laughed. "We're just going to talk. On neutral ground."

Discusstheir situation? The bitch dumped him. That's not a situation; that's warfare.

As politely as possible: "Well, I hope you both get everything resolved."

Big grin on my face. I'm so proud of myself. "I'll call you tomorrow," he said. "No phone, remember?" "You call me?" "Will do."

"You don't sound pissed…" Don't I? I'lltry harder…

"… but you probably are. The thing is, I like you a lot, Rune. I didn't want to lie to you."

"Honest, yeah, I appreciate honesty, Sam. That's very important."

They hung up.

"Fuck honesty," she said out loud.

He should've lied through his teeth. Told me he was dismantling bombs. That he had to have his gallbladder out. That he had tickets to take Adam to the Mets.

She leaned against the phone stall for a moment, looking at the graffiti sprayed on the clear glass sides of the booth. A motorcycle went past. A voice called, "Wanna ride?" But the Honda didn't slow down.

Sweat ran, tickling in streams down her face. She wiped it away and walked west toward the river. She stepped in a blob of tar that grabbed her shoe. It came away with thick black strings attached.

Rune sighed and sat down on the curb, wiping off what she could.

Picnic, she was thinking. Beach. Mountains.

He could have told me he had a headache. Or he got a stomach flu.

Talk about their situation…

Dump her, Healy, Rune thought. She's no good for you.

She knew, though, where it would end up.

He'd go back to the wife.

It was so hyperobvious. Back to Cheryl, with her daisy contact paper. Cheryl, with her white silk blouses and big boobs. The Darling-I'm-making-eggplant-casserole-for-the-Andersons Cheryl. Who was probably a perfectly fine person and who only walked out after he refused her tearful and perfectly reasonable request to get out of bomb detail.

She'd be decent, sweet, a good person. A perfect mother.

How I hate her…

Rune had canceled the restaurant interview, thinking she'd be on her way to the beach. She didn't have any money to work on her film. She was stuck in deserted New York over a blistering hot August weekend. And her only boyfriend was going to shack up with his wife that night.

Aw, Sam…

It was then that she glanced up to a storefront window and saw an old sign, faded and warped, that advertised tax return preparation by a CPA.

Rune looked at the sign, smiled, and said, "Thank you, Lord."

She stood up and left black footprints of tar all the way back to the phone.

Rune opened the door of her houseboat and let Warren Hathaway, carrying several beach bags, inside. In sports clothes-shorts, a dark green Izod shirt and tennies-he was much less of a nerd than he had been in the suit.

"Hey, Warren, you're looking pretty crucial."

"Crucial?"

"Jazzed? You know, cool."

"Well, thanks." Hathaway laughed.

"You like?" Rune did a pirouette. She wore a miniskirt and red tank top over her bikini.

"You're looking pretty crucial yourself. What are those on your skirt? Electric eels?"

She looked down at the squiggly lines radiating from larger squiggly lines. "It's from South America. I think they're landing pads for spaceships."

"Ah. Spaceships, sure."

Rune slung her leopard-skin bag over her shoulder and locked the. front door.

"I was really glad to hear from you. I was going to call. I mean, Idid -at that place you used to work. But they said you didn't havea phone at home. I'm glad you called. I didn't know if I'd ever hear from you again."

No way was she going to say that she'd been stood up or-at least until he had a few drinks in him-that she needed some backing for her film and had he thought any more about the investment idea? So she just said, "I thought it might be fun to get some fresh air. I didn't mean to wheedle a trip to Fire Island. You have a place out there?"

They walked down the wharf to his car. "I wish. I'm in a summer share. A lot of the people from the firm go in together. When you said you wanted to get out of the city I thought about the Island.

"I've never been there. Why do they call it that, I wonder. Fire Island."

Hathaway shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'll look it up and give you a call."

Rune looked at the frown on his face as he memorized his task. Seemed like he still needed a little work at loosening up, according to mother's instructions.

They loaded their bags into the trunk and got into the car.

"Put your seat belt on," he said. "Yessir."

He started the car and drove out onto the highway, heading south.

Rune didn't even have to bring up the topic. Before they'd gone a half mile Hathaway said, "I've run a lot of numbers on documentary films. They're kind of encouraging. It's not a gold mine. But it looks like there's money to be made. We'll go over the details if you want." "Well, sure."

He signaled and checked his blind spot as he cautiously changed lanes.

In two hours they climbed off the ferry and trekked over the sandy sidewalks to his vacation house, halfway between Kismet and Ocean Beach on Fire Island. The place was a cheap assembly of sharp-angled gray wood and glass and yellow pine with polyurethane so thick the grain was distorted by the lens of the coats. When Warren finally got the door open-he had key trouble-Rune was disappointed. The windows were filthy. The grit of sand and salt was everywhere. The stench of Lysol and the sour scent of mold fought for supremacy.

A crummy house, a romantic beach-and an accountant…

Thanks tons, Sam.

But, hey, life could be worse. At least he was a rich accountant, almost ready to invest in her documentary film.

And besides, they had a fierce yellow sun and a case of Budweiser and potato chips and Cheez Whiz and Twinkies and the restless Atlantic Ocean.

Who needed anything but that?

Arthur Tucker, no longer dressed in his workaday suit but in an old work shirt and slacks and rubber-soled shoes, sat forward in the back of a taxicab and told the driver to go slower.

They were cruising along the West Side Highway.

"What're we looking for?" the man asked in a thick accent.

"A houseboat."

"Ha. You kidding."

"Slower."

"Here," he said. "Stop here."

"You sure?" the driver asked. "Here?"

Tucker didn't answer. The Chevy pulled to a stop. He climbed out of the cab, picked up the heavy canvas bag beside him and paid the driver. He made a point of not asking for a receipt; the less evidence, he knew, the better.